


My Heart's a Lighter Thing

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2021, Fluff, Hair Braiding, Intimacy, Love Languages, Non-Sexual Intimacy, i cant believe these two invented love, let vespa have long hair 2k21, this is just. so incredibly nice, this is so soft you guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29689398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: There were a thousand quiet ways to say I love you, from a silent nod to a passing squeeze of hands to the fact that on bad days, Buddy would always make Rangian tea, even if it was acidic and low quality and threatened to give Vespa a hernia every time she took a sip. Maybe it wasn’t the good stuff Sikuliaq kept around, but that didn’t particularly matter to Vespa. At the end of the day, it had notes of familiarity and nostalgia and home. Vespa was fairly sure she loved that tea in the same way she loved Buddy Aurinko.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: The Penumbra Podcast Femslash February 2021!





	My Heart's a Lighter Thing

**Author's Note:**

> hOOOOOO BOY THIS ONE'S SOFT FELLAS
> 
> No content warnings!! just enjoy :)!

Buddy had long since learned to hide her nerves. Like any survival skill, it was one any self respecting thief had to master. Perhaps she could turn her gaze to steel and press on a smile the way a predator bares its fangs, but she could never entirely do away with her tells. 

To someone unobservant, the twitching of her fingers or circling of her ankles seemed nothing more than boredom. However, after enough years memorizing Buddy as if she were the schematics to a prison break, Vespa didn’t doubt she knew every single one of those habits even better than.

Years of knowing and months of re-learning Buddy Aurinko had left a quiet understanding between the two of them. There were times when Vespa knew better than to ask how the hell Buddy knew she was having a bad mental health day. She didn’t doubt that she’d managed to breathe in a specific manner that told Buddy that she should make Vespa a cup of tea, if not for the beverage, just for the feeling of something warm and solid in her hands to offer comfort, even if she didn’t want to be touched.

There were a thousand quiet ways to say I love you, from a silent nod to a passing squeeze of hands to the fact that on bad days, Buddy would always make Rangian tea, even if it was acidic and low quality and threatened to give Vespa a hernia every time she took a sip. Maybe it wasn’t the good stuff Sikuliaq kept around, but that didn’t particularly matter to Vespa. At the end of the day, it had notes of familiarity and nostalgia and home. Vespa was fairly sure she loved that tea in the same way she loved Buddy Aurinko.

After long enough memorizing someone’s idiosyncrasies in a long-running accidental gesture of care, Vespa was fairly sure she had learned how to return these quiet I love yous in her own way. They weren’t always difficult, nor were many of them new. Vespa had been waking up with delicate braids from nervous fingers woven into her hair for years, and all that had required was a little patience and quietness and pretending to be asleep, even if she was almost positive Buddy saw through her ruse.

Despite this, she took her time to turn around, just to spare Buddy’s turbulent mind the trouble. Vespa didn’t doubt her fingers moved deftly due to one plan or another boring a hole in the back of her head and keeping her from sleep. However, on one evening a little too close to their upcoming heist to risk a major loss in sleep, Vespa made a point of yawning loudly enough that Buddy’s hand wrenched away from her hair as if burned.

“Vespa, I am so sorry if I woke you up,” Buddy started.

Vespa rolled over, muscle memory directing her to the exact angle where she would land with her head on Buddy’s chest and an arm flopped over her waist.

“Don’t have to be sorry for anything, Bud,” she tried her best not to yawn again.

“I won’t ever—”

“Keep playing with my hair,” Vespa snorted. “If it’s making you feel better, I don’t care.”

“Oh,” Buddy swallowed. “And once again, if I’m keeping you awake, you don’t need to make any accommodations for me. In fact, I think I’ll—”

Vespa was a little too busy appreciating just how warm her wife was to raise her head. However, she was all too happy to navigate the bed by touch, so long as touch meant flopping her free arm around until she found Buddy’s hand and could drag it back to her hair, humming happily at the feeling of Buddy’s nails against her scalp.

“Well, in that case, I don’t see any reason to be taking my leave,” Buddy chuckled.

“You’d better not,” Vespa teased.

Thanks to the predilections of both the hacker, and, though she doubted he would ever admit it, Steel, Vespa had seen enough sappy romance movies to last her a lifetime. However, she doubted any love confession, no matter how much it made Steel pretend not to openly weep in front of all his coworkers, would have anything on the feeling of Buddy’s hands in her hair.

At the end of the day, ‘I love you’ was just three words. As heavy as one of those words was, it was a single syllable, a blip upon the tongue. It took just as much time to denote an object or to curse when she accidentally dropped a scalpel and had to clean the damn thing all over again. 

It couldn’t possibly carry the gravity of gentle fingers weaving together strands of hair to soothe a pounding heart and an aching mind. The single profession of affection could do little more than state a beautiful and complicated and holy thing as fact, while Vespa had the dumb luck of experiencing that concept first hand. She heard it in the stubborn pounding of Buddy’s automatic heart beneath her ear. She felt it in the rhythmic rising and falling of a warm chest beneath her head. She heard it in the way Buddy exhaled, winding herself down towards calm while Vespa sat still and felt the way her hands worshipped their little creations, woven of the hair Vespa had spent months growing out just so Buddy could braid it a little easier.

“Are you feeling any better?” Vespa eventually yawned. 

She knew the answer, for Buddy’s hands had continued to fiddle a few extra braids into strands of her hair. However, she supposed that language took a second meaning altogether when one had known someone else like their own soul for so long. She did not ask for an update so much as she asked for Buddy to prompt the next step forward.

“As lovely as your hair is, darling, I hate to inform you that it hasn’t made my mind a more considerate bedmate,” Buddy sighed.

“So how do I help?”

“Regretfully, my brain is one of the few organs that is not mechanized. I can’t exactly ask either you or Jet to engineer a way to calm it down when it’s busy fretting over heists we haven’t even started yet.”

“I’ve got a lot of hair left, Bud.”

Vespa propped her chin up on Buddy’s chest just in time to see her raise an eyebrow.

“I had noticed that,” Buddy started. “I know you liked to keep it short as a utilitarian measure, but I must say, I like it long like this.”

“Gives you more of an excuse to play with it,” Vespa chuckled.

“Is that—”

“Nah, I’ve always kinda wanted to grow it out,” Vespa returned. “Once I stopped worrying about the sand, I kept forgetting to cut it. It grew long enough that I realized I kinda liked it that way. Besides, there’s a hell of a lot more room for braids. I dunno if it’ll always make you feel better, but hell, it’s the least I can do.”

“Vespa,” Buddy breathed, “what in the devil did I ever do to deserve you?”

“It also feels really good,” Vespa added with a soft laugh.

Buddy’s feigned glare only lasted a moment, for it seemed even the ghost of anger at her wife at a time like this could barely find an excuse to exist in their realm. Vespa didn’t have much time to look at her face, as much as she could have spent an eternity memorizing her every feature. Her head returned to Buddy’s breastbone as Buddy’s hands returned to her hair, combing and scratching with ginger fingers before bringing a strand near her temple into her grasp to twist it into an intricate braid.

This was a new location for any ornament to her hair. In the past, it hadn’t been long enough, not to mention being further away from Buddy’s reach when she slept behind her, arms wound around her waist. However, if keeping her hair long meant a braid characterized by gentle brushes to her cheek, Vespa didn’t see a reason to cut her hair ever again.

Vespa wasn’t sure when she fell asleep, nor when she awoke. Even though the ship’s daytime lights were shining merrily under the door, the soft sounds of Buddy’s slumbering breathing kept Vespa from moving much. Another silent I love you was holding still, knowing Buddy needed all the sleep she could get, even if her nerves wanted her to pry her from bed to go over the mission schematics again.

After calculating that raising her head wouldn’t wake her wife, Vespa found a new challenge in keeping her adoring chuckle to herself when she managed to catch her reflection in the mirror. The few braids she remembered being awake for were woven into a larger twist and tied with the trusty black hairband Vespa never parted from her wrist, even when her hair was far too short to tie up. From the lack of a band-borne imprint on her wrist, Vespa guessed that Buddy had managed some sleep after all if she had abandoned Vespa’s hair that long ago. 

Even if the band would not leave an imprint, the braid certainly would. It was not a mark Vespa minded wearing around, from the actual style to the artful waves when she eased her own fingers through the hair until it fell to her shoulders. All marks, she supposed, were sisters in a way, each carried with their own meaning. This one, however temporary, felt more alike to the mark of her wedding ring than to the marks of her scars.

Maybe the rest of the crew wouldn’t see it for another few hours, for Vespa was adamant on staying in place until Buddy had finished getting all the sleep she needed. However, Vespa was all too happy to carry a mark of care and caring with her for the day.

**Author's Note:**

> HELL YEAH WOMEN
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or Repent
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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